


If My Complaints Could Passions Move

by oedipamaas (tyroneslothrop)



Category: One Direction (Band), Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Experimental, I'm gonna Fukc the fourth wall, M/M, Metafanfiction?, Metafiction, very experimental
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-24
Updated: 2015-10-25
Packaged: 2018-04-27 23:13:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5068564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tyroneslothrop/pseuds/oedipamaas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dan, Phil, Louis and Harry have a fanfiction club. Everything is great.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Bubblegum post-modernism. I've tried to proofread and edit as little as possible. Let's see how this ends up.

Don't ask how it happened, how they'd all made each others acquaintance. It was an inevitability, the similarities in age, all the crossover in their respective fandoms, and that one time they'd interviewed them... there's always a bond between people who have sexual relevance to each other. They'd laughed at their jokes whilst Liam, Niall and Zayn struggled to humour them, hoping their real emotions wouldn't flood out from their plastic smiles. Louis and Harry didn't need to mind that though, because they could feel their sexuality exuding from their flesh, and they reveled in it. Or something poetic to that effect. They were instantly enamored, and demanded their numbers to keep contact. So here we are in 2015, and here they're sat, and questioning their companionship is an exercise in intellectual vanity. Celebrity culture is a sordid, stillborn melting pot and sooner or later, you'll become indistinguishable to everyone around you (regardless of whether you consider two of our characters 'celebrities', the term is debatable and therefore useless in this society).

Imagine the scene, 4 chairs in a perfect diamond, like a crown for every quarter slice of a clock. Harry 12, Louis 3, Dan 6, Phil 9. Dan's legs are splayed over the plastic chairs they were all erected on, much like AA, much like elementary, and he's holding a cup of water, observing the sight parallel to him. Louis has his elbows on his knees, massaging his eyebrows, furrowed. Very somnolent was Phil, slumped over his plastic seat in exhaustion. The only person with a drop of vibrancy in him was Harry, who was gesticulating wildly, eyes bulging out of his head in excitement. No-one even pretended to share it, the emotion reaching out in the room for another spectator, and when seeing the idle display in front of them, died at Harry's feet

"That author knew me! I was the Harry that was depicted in that story! I felt myself turn into that fanfic, bleed into the glow from my iPhone, the sonorous billow of the authors words beating at my heart, my soul no longer-"

"Oh shut the fuck up you poetaster," Louis blurts in a mad anger, "No wonder you liked it, you wouldn't be able to tell Proust from Green. Don't know why I even married you."

"Not everything has to be a 4,000 page epic for it to have literary worth, darling. Sometimes all we need is some simple prose to help us get along," Harry says with a vague, dreamy look in his eye. Dan and Phil fidget with their hands.

"Simple like that fanfic, simple like your fucking self."

As you may have guessed, this is a fanfiction club. One evening, gathered in the sweaty commune of Louis and Harry's living room, Dan had noticed Harry's eyes were travelling over his phone in a strange hunger, in lumps that were too large to be text messages.

"What'r'ya readin'?"

Harry said 'nothing', but the way he glanced to Louis' sagged form, Dan already knew. 2 hours later they were subscribed to each other's AO3s and discussing what zarah5's writing process must be. So it goes. It only makes sense that this would eventually tumble into a weekly meeting ground, any other conclusion would just be ludicrous. Every Monday, by the way. But back to the present.

"I just... don't like school AUs anymore. I've read too many," Phil says with a strange wave of his fingers.

"God! You're all tasteless!" Harry cries, "you're too focused on whether something is _cliche_ or uses too many _tropes_ to actually get lost in the story! Young  & Beautiful is a masterpiece beyond any of your comprehensions!"

"Shut. The fuck. Up," Louis grits through his teeth.

They sit in silence for a few more beats, Dan eyeing them all wearily from above his glass of water, still full, seeming to serve no other purpose other than to make him look 'shady'. Phil gets the urge to lean over and knock it out of his hands, the daft bastard.

"So, same time next week?"

"Sure!" Louis says, becoming chipper. "You coming, Haz baby?"

"Yeah, just, what's next weeks fic?"

"Roll the Dice and Swear, I'll link you's," Phil opens the door for them. What a gentleman, Louis thinks. Harry could take some tips.

When the door slams, echoing through the hallway, Phil and Dan sit together again. The absence makes something between them feel more hollow, more frail. For some reason, the room begins to give off a smoky smell and Phil retches, grabbing Dan's cup of water and throwing it down his throat, drowning his stomach.

"Hey, I was gonna drink that!"

"No you fucking weren't."

There was a storm ready to tumble into their house from the outside. Their windows were closed.


	2. Chapter 2

"Not gonna lie, I jerked off to it."

Harry sighs. Dan and Phil blink at him.

As it turns out, the fanfics weren't all that far off. In fact, it seemed like Louis had morphed into an exact carbon copy of every single pseudo-Louis that existed on archiveofourown. He was the lively, swearing, beer guzzling #lad most of the time. One time he actually came with 6 pack to a meeting once, and Harry had just gave them a look that said "I couldn't stop him". His excuse was 'the fanfic was shit mate, 'a lifeless walking combination of skin and bones?' fuck off, I'm not humouring that with a discussion'. He was the flamboyant, quiet queen too. Most of the times he'd sit with his legs spread, scratch his balls, laugh obnoxiously at whatever Dan or Harry said but some days he'd draw into himself, hands crossed, legs hooked behind the chair legs and he wouldn't make eye contact, a quick glance up, a flutter of his eyelashes and a look back down again. No-one questioned it, and Harry never looked surprised. These were always the times where you could get a proper conversation out of him that didn't consist of a flurry of insults and hammy references to early 20th century writers, so Dan and Phil cherished them. Louis was the intelligent architect, the sullen painter, the 'slutty' student, the brash barista, the cute clerk at the guitar store, he was everything and nothing and Phil always felt like he was in the uncanny valley around him. Dan didn't care. He sneaked him in beer sometimes, because Phil was against anything where drinking it from the can was considered acceptable. They're both pretentious wankers, Dan thinks bitterly, why don't they get along more

"What? You humping his back was fucking hot,"he says, addressing Phil. Phil at least has the deceny to blush at this.

"So, what did you's think?" he says, spreading his legs more, nodding towards Dan and Phil. They start fidgeting.

"Well, uh...."

"It was a re-read."

"Yeah."

They both gulp and stare at the wall.

Louis, titling his head back and closing his eyes, lets out a long bubbling stream of laughter that begins to fill the room from the carpet to the ceiling, threatening to drown all the passengers. Something about how utterly idiotic Louis looks makes Dan's throat begin to bob too and suddenly the entire room is capsized with laughs. Dan puts his face in his hands, tears begin forming in Harry's eyes, Phil's tumbles off his chair. This is Louis' world. No-one can hear the commotion, the windows are closed.

-

Dan would sometimes reread all the stories he'd written and recoil immediately, his scrawl seeming to produce nothing but shit. He wonders if he would ever return to them, try to form them into something of worth, now that he knows more. A few particular scraps of paper caught his eye this time, and he hesitated, his Adam's apple swelling a bit. This one always seemed to stick out, one that he actually published, where Phil died and came back as a vampire... yes, he knows. He picks it up. Runs his eyes over the words again."...out of the corner of his eye he saw the crimson trail of his friend's life weaving around the cobbled stones of the street and down a drain.", what the fuck does that mean? He fell down onto his bed in despair and began to cope with the realization that he would always be, in Louis' words, a poetaster.

-

"You didn't assign a fic last time," Louis says, arms crossed over his chest. His legs are spread too. Ho hum, so it goes.

"Yeah," Dan scowls from above his mug of water (Jesus fucking Christ, Phil thinks), "I have another idea."

Harry, Phil and Louis all let out a childish ooOooOoooh and what the fuck is this, elementary school? Dan doesn't know why he hasn't let this group die yet. It's obvious none of them enjoy this. Dan's too sulky, Phil's too polite (till he says goodbye to their visitors, but that's another fanfic for another time), Harry's too passionate and Louis' too abrasive. None of them meld together, not even the couples. But let's stick it out for a few more weeks, readers. See what results Dan's suggestion yields.

"Ooooh, let's listen to the big man with his 'ideaaaaas'."

"Shut up," Dan growls.

"Well, what is it sweetheart?" Phil tries with a smile that looks ridiculous on his big ass head. Dan's scowl worsens, if that's even possible.

"Let's all write a fanfic ourselves, and see who writes the best one."

ooOooOoooh

"I'm gonna win!" Louis says triumphantly, and makes a move for the door. Harry shuffles behind him, smiling at his feet.

-

The way everyone shows up to the next meeting, overly smug, wielding A4 sheets of paper with Calibri 10pt inked on them, should be laughable. But it's not, this is serious. They're sat like a clock again, but this isn't a clock strung up uselessly in a living room, despite everyone in the residence having phones. This is Big Ben, like someone suspended turning bolts of iron above the London Eye. And they're sat up like the slabs on metal in the Tyne Bridge. Looking at each other like they're landmarks ready to be demolished.

"Well, should I go first lads?" Louis says and oh for fucks SAKE they all collectively think.

He coughs, cracks his knuckles, picks his sheets up gingerly like they're made of silk.

"Well... Mr. Styles said he would buy the flowers himself. For Louis had his work cut out for him. The doors would be taken off their hinges; Rumpelmayer’s men were coming. And then, thought Harry Styles, what a morning – fresh as if issued to children on a beach. What a lark! What a plu-"

"You think none of us have read Mrs Dalloway, you fucking dickhead?"

Louis eyes Dan in a strange, insidious way.

"What's that?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is just gonna get more wanky as it goes on tbh, stop now.


End file.
